Braemar sells Key West's Pier House Resort for $190 million

Braemar Hotels & Resorts sold the 142-key Pier House Resort & Spa at 1 Duval Street in Key West for $190 million, more than doubling the $93 million tied to the 2014 deal and far above the $90 million in cash Ashford Hospitality Prime said it paid when it bought the hotel on March 3, 2014. At roughly $1.34 million a room, the price puts a fresh mark on one of Monroe County’s best-known hotel parcels.

The buyer, Last Mango Owner LLC, has been linked in public deal-tracking references to the Last Mango branding associated with Jimmy Buffett’s Key West legacy. The property is managed by Remington Hospitality and sits on Duval Street, where room rates, staffing levels and tourist traffic are tightly tied to the island’s hospitality economy.

Pier House’s own history page says the resort began in 1967 as a 50-room motel built by Key West native David Wolkowsky. The hotel markets itself as a historic Key West property and “an oasis of calm in the middle of Duval Street,” language that underscores how central the site is to the island’s visitor market and to the value of land that fronts one of the city’s busiest corridors.

The jump from the 2014 price, which worked out to about $634,000 per key, to this sale suggests how aggressively investors have repriced prime Keys lodging in the past decade. For a 142-room resort at the heart of the tourist strip, that kind of step-up can influence expectations for nearby hotel valuations, future redevelopment math and the tax base that Monroe County and the city of Key West use to measure high-end commercial property.

The transaction also fits Braemar’s broader corporate overhaul. The company announced a shareholder value creation plan on May 6, 2024, and later said on Aug. 26, 2025, that it was initiating a process for the sale of the company. The asset sale supports Braemar’s effort to raise cash as it works through a separation from Ashford that has been tied to a potential $480 million fee or payment and to shareholder controversy.

For Key West, the change hands at Pier House is more than a luxury hotel trade. A landmark at 1 Duval Street carries implications for room pricing, workers, redevelopment plans, property values and how much of the site remains open and accessible as ownership changes.